Still Here

Since my last blog entry, I’m afraid there hasn’t been much luck on the job front: I’m still dying of boredom in construction. I’ve applied for one other job, at least got an interview this time, but again missed out. The depressing thing isn’t so much getting rejected, but that fact there are so few jobs to get rejected from. In the past four weeks I’ve checked the newspapers and various Internet sites everyday, and still only found two positions I could realistically apply for.

So my life as a construction worker continues, with no end in sight. Although at least this week I can find solace in the fact that I’ve been assigned to one of my favourite jobs in construction: demolition. Nothing relieves stress and frustration like standing in a room with a crowbar, tiger-saw, and orders to destroy everything in sight. Sometimes I like to take the crazed psychopath approach, where I just grad a crowbar and hack away at the walls with all my energy until things start to fall apart. When I really get into it, I feel like a rock star trashing a hotel room. But it can be tiring, so other times I take what I like the call the surgical approach. This is where I analyse a structure and identify its weak points. I then cut away the bare minimum from a few sensitive areas, give the wall gently push, and watch it all come crashing down in one hit. It can be quite empowering.

At the moment, I’m working in an office block called Canon House. A company has just bought a floor of office space and wants it renovated. Apparently this is a common line of work in this industry as corporations are constantly moving premises. Often they can never accept a new place as it is, and feel the need to have it renovated to suit their needs. As a result such projects often involve renovating places that are less then a year old.
This current site is a good example, as we’re basically tearing down recently built walls, and ripping up brand new carpet. The walls I’m tearing down are almost indistinguishable to the ones that my co-workers are putting up.

In this particular office space I’m working on, one half is portioned into individual offices, while the other half is open-plan. The new tenants want us to tear down the partitions in the first half, so it is also open-plan. Meanwhile in the other half, the half that is already open-plan, they would like us to build partitions to make it into individual offices.
In the end they’ll have an office that is pretty much identical as it was before, expect facing the other direction. Then they’ll probably move, and another construction company will be called in to renovate it once again for some other company. Corporations really are bizarre entities.